As smart phones, tablets, and wireless devices in general grow more and more popular, the demand for wireless connectivity keeps rising. At the same time, applications and services require more data to be transmitted for single users, which puts even more stress on service providers to increase capacity. One option is to build new base stations and provide different ways to connect — especially in the areas of dense usage. However, this is expensive and requires end-user devices to be able to use different wireless techniques and to switch between them according to position and data usage. On the other hand, the variance of wireless technologies and specific spectrum allocation has caused another phenomenon: in certain areas, the spectrum allocated to one user group is heavily utilized but the spectrum usage might otherwise be minimal.
To answer these rising problems on capacity and spectrum utilization, developing and researching of new solutions is required. A prominent area of research that can make a difference is cognitive technology: it provides ways to use spectrum and existing technology more efficiently than in their current state. Meanwhile it can also optimize the use of radio and operator resources when building new equipment and systems.
The goal of this master’s thesis work is to implement an interface between a cognitive trial environment and a separately functioning cognitive radio network. The cognitive trial environment is built around a cognitive engine, which is an entity that manages network resources according to the information it receives from the environment. The outside network consists of cognitive radio devices called Wireless Open-access Research Platforms and a cognitive engine of its own. They are able to provide information and management capabilities that are beneficial for the environment. The interface will be a solution for the environment’s cognitive engine to gain knowledge of the outside network and manage the resources of the cognitive radio devices residing in it.
This thesis work will also discuss the meaning and the development of cognitive radio and network techniques. The discussion takes a look at the underlying reasons to develop cognitive solutions and how the cognition could be implemented in the future.